Making wine naturally is very, very difficult. I just got an email from Milva Giacone of Renato Fenocchio. The message does not need much explanation. The photo above is from when we introduced two of our farmers, Martin Arndorfer and Renato Fenocchio- that’s Milva and |Martin discussing best practices in the vineyards. 

Ciao, Anthony

i write from this e-address because my does not work…we have a bad storm and hope it will not be hail. Yesterday there were a terrible hailstorm in Bra and the day before in Canale, and it destroyed all.

Now it has  been raining since May 11th and our grapes are going. and, even if we work in the vineyard while it rains, we are afraid this vintage will not be ok, unless it stopped raining at once.

I am happy about Martin’s vineyard…he could avoid the hail. He is a nice guy and a excellent producer and he deserve good luck.

Instead we have a problem, in the sense we have only 1500 bottles of dolcetto 2007 remaining from the first bottling -the one you tasted- and could not work the other wine, that is the same of the first bottling but now it is cloudy because of the bad weather and can’t be moved or bottled until it stops raining. And it seems we are having rain and hail for 8 days more.

So we are sorry we have not enough wine for your new shipping, but we could not work for a month in the cellar and we are late with the works that we thought were ok at the end of may.

i know it is a terrible problem, so i hope you will excuse us for being late: as you know -we learned it by  Bruno Giacosa- natural wines can not be worked with bad weather and we have not having one month  of rain since 1991! The problem is bottling them with the rain means they will be cloudy always. Natural wine is a great goal, but it suffers everything.

so , according to you, is it possible to send you only 1500 bottles of Dolcetto 2007 now and the remaining bottles with the next order? The alternative is to wait at least 30 days for having all the 1920 bottles. they could be ready, then, but not refined.

i wait for an answer from you, and apologize for the problem. Hope you will find a solution and promise of doing everything we can do for helping you.

thank you  very much

milva

(We will obviously take less Dolcetto on the current order) 

Some people must have their plane ride US Weekly fix and I do too, but it’s called “Fast Company.” I used to subscribe, but I actually prefer the immediate gratitude of seeing a new issue on the airport newsstand. No matter the magazine, from Ranger Rick to Sports Illustrated to Esquire, I always flip directly to the back page. In the current issue, Elizabeth Spiers takes on the “buy local” notion. “much of the buy-local  movement has nothing to do with geography. The emotional tenor, at least, is much more about shunning corporate behemoths. If the farmer next door happens to be Monsanto, you rethink buying local. What buying local really means is buying boutique-branded artisanal products that are crafted with tender loving care by actual human beings. Or what merely appear to be. Witness the success of the slightly-more-expensive-but-supposedly-made-with-love-by-seemingly small -companies Muir Glen, Kashi, Odwalla- owned by General Mills, Kellogg, and Coca-Cola, respectively. Large corporations certainly aren’t unaware of local appeal and are happy to exploit it as a marketing tool…The challenge for the socially conscious consumer is to determine whether a "local" purchase actually achieves what it’s supposed to achieve."

Sometimes our wines are passed over for less expensive, chemical-laced versions from BC wine factories in the interest of being "local." It’s too bad because knowing your farmer isn’t just a slogan- Farmstead Wines actually knows every farmer personally, and you can enjoy a delicious bottle of wine while supporting a small farmer who farms naturally with love. The solution to the challenge that Ms. Spiers presents is one that can only be resolved by truly understanding provenance of the products we consume. Often, supporting a local farmer means something more than an arbitrary mileage calculation. 

(Thanks to Hugh MacLeod for the cartoon. You should be reading his blog…http://gapingvoid.com/) 

I was lucky enough to have my wife, Sarah, accompany me on my most recent trip to France.  Below is the long, interesting email that she sent to family and friends about our adventures…

Hi again – this is a long one so only read if you have time…

Just finished the wine tour in France. It was again, amazing, like last time… different because now we know the people a little better but a true experience nonetheless.

More details to come when we return but an overall theme would be… It is interesting how much the philosophy  of working in the vineyards relates to everyday life and life in general. First, a little bit about the trip…

Went to Alsace to see Marc Tempe. Arrived and no one was home because of course we hadn’t told them the exact times of our arrival. Fortunately, a neighbour walked past us and came to our aid. She called Marc on his cell and also let us into their house. That night was spent similar to the first time we met them, in their garden, eating at a table next to a wood (or on this night), vine burning barbeque- Anthony was impressed. We had Marc and my choice meat – bbq’d pork. Delish…… and we also learned that Marc and I had something important in common – eating…. eating A LOT. :) We also found out that they are also expecting their first grandchild in August as well. More bootie knitting for Sarah…

The next day was a bit stressful – perhaps unbelievable but true. We woke up early (like every morning thus far) had some french croissants – they had bought fresh from the village, of course there were 6 on the plate because they think I’m a pig… We started with a trip in the vineyards. Anthony realized he wanted to collect soil from the vineyards so we were rationing the one plastic bag into several small parcels and it was becoming my job to tie them shut. Travel home will be interesting for him with soil – no comment… We did a tasting after the tour and he makes a ton of different wines so needless to say, a very large long tasting. Although, I shouldn’t say this, I think he makes some of my favorite in our entire team of wines. They are almost all white and are just unbelievably fruity and fresh with finesse and the perfect amount of sugar plus acidity… easy to drink which means incredibly complex (I’ve been learning a few things… or trying).

We had lunch at la domaine tempe and the grandmother made poulet avec les pommes frites – home made so again… Delish. The stress was the big decision on whether Marc would accompany us to Courbissac – his other winery that he manages and works. It is 5-6 hours south of Alsace and our original plan was that we would stop and visit with another vigneron along the way – Jean David in the Cote de Rhone region. Finally after Marc asking his wife to pack his suitcase for him and driving the poor wife crazy with his indecisiveness, we were off chez Jean David. He was driving – thank goodness and we spent a good 2-3 hrs on Anthony’s Farmstead questions. Ahhh…. the farmstead questions – all you need to know is that Anthony is doing his job well, but for his wife, it isn’t the easiest thing (even with a wine translation book) to translate for 2-3 hrs back and forth dans le francais on questions like "tell me the soil type for each of your parcels of vines" or questions about maceration or fermentation or trelassing or ph etc etc etc. Marc and I also bonded and I told him that I wanted to come back to Alsace to do a castle tour because there are some amazing small castles all over alsace and I have yet to see anything but vines. So – Amy, get ready, hopefully we can search out crevasses and corners.

We arrived at Jean David’s quite late – thank god Marc was driving because, like most of these places, it would have been impossible to find – for me. We met Jean David and his wife Martina.

Courbissac is beautiful – brand new renovated house because the man who provided a lot of the funding for Courbissac is a movie producer – German – but produced movies like Whalerider. So, we did a tour of the vineyards which are numerous and all over the place. We tasted the wines out of the barrels and off we went to dinner in a small town called Minerve. I will show you all the photos of this town because it was amazing. Ok, not easy to get to, mais quand meme – you should all go. Very very pretty. A town that stands on top of soil that has been eroded on both sides 2 rivers so it is now very high up above a canyon only reachable by walking bridge. We had dinner (good but service was lacking) and we returned home to drink more wine. We ended up staying up late and talking about the first topic that I mentioned in the opening. Instead of going into detail – I will only mention one point – Marc was discussing how now a days most people still use chemicals in the vineyards and if their vines are sick, they simply try to add more chemicals to treat them. I asked him " how is it possible that they don’t see that their vines are sick and dying and that your vines – the ones DIRECTLY next to theirs, are the perfect image of health?" He paused and said… "firstly, nowadays people have lost their ability to think (reflechir). They only do what they are told and they can’t think for themselves. Also, instead of thinking of just treating the vines when they are just sick, they forget to think of treating the vines BEFORE they even get sick. Once the vines are sick, like with humans, we just want to treat them with chemicals instead of thinking about what happened in their life before to make them this way and what we could have done to prevent this from happening." For me, it was a moment of awakening (ok – sounds cheesy I know) but really, to me it’s what I think as well about life and Western medicine to some degree. Anyway – I could go on but this is already too long and I am sure this is something that I will discuss with each of you when I return at some point.

Wild Vines grow in the wild, grapes begin to ferment (rot on the ground)

Natural Vines tended by humans, grapes ferment in human devised containers

Wine Humans plant and nurture vines, use human devised containers to assist fermentation

Parkerized Humans plant and fertilize vines, use containers and technology to manipulate grapes into wine

Industrial Workers plant and maximize output of vines, use whatever inputs necessary to efficiently create a product marketed as wine
 

Read more about our philosophy, perspective, and perhaps grasp on reality here. 

Inspired by Alice Feiring’s writing on Japan and Natural Wine 

Every wine in the Farmstead Wines collection is naturally farmed and handcrafted. While there are certainly different practices and ideas employed by each farm, they share a common theme: natural equilibrium. While it would be simpler to put each farm into a category of biodynamic, organic, sustainable, etc, such categories ignore the complexity of nature, agriculture and winegrowing. The natural world and humans’ relationship with and in it can rarely be explained in a single word, phrase, or government certification. All of our farms do use techniques that are considered organic or biodynamic practices, but they are employed for a purpose beyond marketing or a certification program. Our farmers utilize these methods for only one reason: quality. The only way to have really fantastic, complex wine is by growing great grapes. Great grapes are the fruit of a healthy plant. Fortunately, a fundamentally healthy plant grows best in a naturally maintained environment. Pesticides, chemicals and artificial inputs do not contribute to the fundamental health of the soil, the plant or the grapes. But this should not be mistaken for plants growing in the wild. Wine is an agricultural product, a delicious beverage that results from mans ability to work in harmony with nature.  Wines of the highest quality are not only the fruit of a healthy vine, but our human ability to cultivate and cooperate with nature.
The trend over the last 50 years has been to industrialize agriculture, turning farms into factories and winegrowing is no exception. Foods and beverages, in many ways, have become nothing more than commodities- a series of inputs, most of which are chemical or artificial manipulations, are added up to create a consumable output. These wines, at best, are designed to have very specific flavors, much like a soft drink.  In response to this trend, many winegrowers are revolting by creating wines that they believe are without the addition of human inputs. This opposite trend also ignores that agriculture is in and of itself a human technology. Many of these wines are certainly interesting, but there flavors are more of a curiosity than an enjoyable drink.  While these and other trends may be popular now and in the future, Farmstead Wines  are timeless. Our farmers use agricultural practices that promote and maintain the natural vitality of the environment; methods that allow a vine to bear delicious fruit; and utilize techniques that preserve and maintain the complex flavors of the grapes.
At the core of Farmstead Wines is our belief in the ability of humans to nurture, maintain, preserve and contribute to life on planet earth. We do not think humans are a scourge, nor do we believe humans are infallible. Farmstead Wines are just one example of the ability of people to positively contribute to a healthy, enjoyable life while cooperating with and supporting nature and other people.
 

We’ve been arguing the importance of knowing the people that farm the grapes and make the wine for awhile now, but this is truly alarming. While many people are focused on the scandal involving Brunello di Montalcino (FYI many big name wine factories have been adding cabernet and syrah to improve their scores and reviews- shocking.) there is a very real criminal problem in cheap Italian wine. Even Time magazine is covering the story-some factories have been adding antifreeze ingredients to wine to improve its perceived value. You can read more about the details here.Absolutely, insanely criminal. What is even more shocking, is how casually Time mentions that .3% methyl alcohol is the legal limit! Government administered certification programs are obviously not the answer. Whether you’re buying food, wine or toys these days, it clearly pays to know the person growing or making it.